PROPRICER™ Insights Blog

Computerized spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel are great for quickly and accurately manipulating large amounts of numerical data. Embedding such spreadsheets with formulas that reflect a company's costing methodologies can allow an enterprise to rapidly generate pricing figures for the business proposals and RFP responses they need to secure new customers. However, as a business grows, such "homegrown" pricing tools often become problematic. When this happens, a new solution much be found.

There might be some 26.5 million businesses in the U.S. -- 99.7% of which are businesses with fewer than 500 employees -- but how many of these can manage to win government contracts, do you think?

When responding to a Request For Proposal (RFP), it's essential you pay close attention to your business proposal format. Submitting your proposal in the required format can mean the difference between winning a contract and failing an otherwise ideal bid.

Did you know that, according to Entrepreneur, the federal government awards contracts worth $500 billion every year? You might also not know that the law requires the government to send at least 23% of these contracts -- nearly one in four -- to small businesses, a category which the vast majority of businesses falls under. In fact, of the some 26.5 million U.S. businesses, a staggering 95% have less than 500 employees, qualifying them as a small business, according to the Small Business Administration.

Because the government inherently creates no real products or services themselves, they must constantly procure things they need from one of the millions of businesses in the United States. The way businesses do this is by bidding on government contracts by submitting a proposal in response to an RFP.

There are approximately 26.5 million businesses in the U.S. and the vast majority (99.7%) employ less than 500 people. Businesses respond to Request for Proposals (RFP) every day to win lucrative government contracts, but bidding on government contracts can be competitive. 

1 – Get the worm, early bird.

The bid process is designed to generate competition in the marketplace. Cost/price analysts do their best to compare apples to apples when reviewing proposal submissions, but there are a few ways you can increase your chances of standing out in the process. Here are five of the most important things you can do to stand tall against the competition:

Contractors deal in a particularly volatile business. Government bidding opportunities, as well as private ones, are a long and highly competitive process that pits dozens (if not more) of different companies against each other for one project. People's jobs and companies' revenues are often on the line. What makes the process even more difficult is the response to a Request For Proposal (RFP). A RFP is a formal solicitation of services for a particular resource or product. RFPs tend to be very detailed about the requirements for the project: the materials, the costs, the time frame, the design, etc. They also tend to be specific about the kind of response they want. A response for a RFP should match it in terms of specification, clarity, and organization.